Pine Island Glacier is more vulnerable than thought - and could cause sea levels to rise by 1.6ft - Daily Mail

Measuring roughly the same size as England, Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier is one of the world's largest and fastest-changing glaciers.

But a new study has warned that the Pine Island Ice Shelf – the ice shelf that controls the flow of ice from the Pine Island Glacier – could be more vulnerable to complete disintegration than previously thought.

A new study has warned that the Pine Island Ice Shelf – the ice shelf that controls the flow of ice from the Pine Island Glacier – could be more vulnerable to complete disintegration than previously thought.

The Pine Island Ice Shelf controls the flow of ice from Pine Island Glacier - roughly the size of England - into the Amundsen Sea. .

Previous studies have shown that the Pine Island Ice Shelf is becoming increasingly fragile due to two key processes.

'It shows the interplay between calving and melting can promote disintegration of the Pine Island Ice Shelf, which we already thought was vulnerable to collapse.'.

Graphic shows how the ice front of the Pine Island Glacier ice front has retreated from 2009 to 2020.

This would reduce the ice shelf's ability to stem the flow of ice from Pine Island Glacier into the sea and increase its contribution to global sea-level rise.

'Complete disintegration of the Pine Island Ice Shelf will have profound consequences not only for Pine Island Glacier but all of West Antarctica as it is thought to play an integral role in maintaining the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,' Dr Bradley explained.

The Pine Island Glacier isn't the only one at risk of collapsing - earlier this month, a study warned that Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier is also 'holding on by its fingernails'. .

For the first time, scientists mapped in high-resolution a critical area of the seafloor in front of Thwaites that gives them a window into how fast the glacier has retreated and moved in the past.